All thumbs when a child’s face is dirty

My mom used to carry endless sheets of tissue in her purse, most of them covered in vibrant splotches of red. Lipstick blotter, she called them, and I have many memories of her swiping on “Cherries in the Snow” before pressing the tissue between her lips.

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Everyone is doing it.

“Why don’t you just put on less if you’re going to take it right back off again?” I asked more than a few times. It became a running dialogue, this mystery of makeup. She would shrug and tell me that’s just the way it was done and to stop pestering her about it. “None of your concern,” she would say.

But the thing is, it was my concern — all those gnarled, bleeding tissues. Sooner or later, my nose would begin to run, and one of those tissues would have my name on it.

Those tissues were rivaled in all around cootieness by just one thing: her thumb. I was never a dainty eater or concerned with cleanliness in anyway whatsoever, so I have many memories of my mom licking her thumb and swiping it across my face. It was the diaper wipe of choice for generations of parents. And it used to gross me out completely. Seeing that thumb come at my head was like watching a slow-motion funhouse movie reel, the thumb and my mom’s face coming in and out of focus while her voice took on an eery lilt: “Just hold still ….”

But you know, all these years later, with a kid of my own, it frequently strikes me just how awesome the wet thumb is.

You always have it on hand, unlike a diaper wipe or a lipstick-besmirched tissue. It works on just about every face stain. It’s easy to clean. And if you’re not concerned about untold communicable diseases and illnesses, you can tidy up a messy face in moments.

I have more than a fair number of friends who insist on hand-washing and Purell dousing before and after meals or after playtime, and I’ve seen a few of them recoil in abject terror when I’ve unleashed the magic wet thumb on my child. I like to think I’m at the very least passing on immunities and offering a bold counter-argument to the era of anti-bacterial-everything.

But the fact is, it’s just that I’m lazy. And it’s so easy. I seemingly can’t help it. I don’t use it all the time, and in an attempt to give my child fewer of the nightmares I once harbored, I make an effort to hide the actual licking part. But I’ve found that the wet thumb is probably the most unsung parenting tool in my arsenal these days. I can’t go anywhere without it.

MIKE ADAMICK writes at Cry It Out! (www.mikeadamick.com). He practices the Hobo Guide to Personal Hygiene.